Thank you all for your contribution

Lately, we read almost everywhere about the sharing and collaboration economy. In the technology world, we have been running on open source systems for more than a decade. However, one does not harness the impact of this facet of the Internet until confronted with the challenge of creating something with limited resources.

At starting up a business, altruistic collaboration reaches all its meaning.  

I feel like TidyChoice, the start-up that I co-founded several months ago, is not only the outcome of our founding-team work, but also the 'child' of the anonymous, and not so anonymous, people that have been populating the Internet with relevant, practical and useful knowledge and advice.

Where shall I start?

What would have I done without all those ruby-on-rails tutorials and code plug-ins  that I used to get myself up to speed on how to create a transactional website? Not much. They were critical to help us develop a minimum viable product in very few months. I should also mention the endless contributions of programmers in StackOverflow, without which technical people like me couldn't progress fast.

And when you look for guidance on how to best start your business... The Internet resurfaces the latest trends and helps everyone avoid reinventing the wheel by learning from other people's experience. Maybe what you need is Lean methodology, or maybe design thinking. No worries; you can find everything that is required online and have the opportunity to benefit from it.

If marketing is your next concern, some of the best marketers teach by example and have become very reachable, sometimes, just one tweet away.

Do not get me wrong. Just reading on the Internet will not make anyone an expert in anything. Experience only comes from acting. Making a a start-up successful is all about execution, and the intervention of experienced professionals is fundamental. However these professionals only get involved as the company evolves. There is no better way to choose the right professionals for your business than knowing exactly what to expect from them and how to assess their skills. I personally wouldn't be able to do all that proficiently if I did not have a good understanding of their jobs.
Never in history has there been so much knowledge reachable for free, so much professional public generosity. Acknowledging the impact that this is having in my life, I can only say:

Thank  you all for your contribution.

 

The start-up thrill

Have you ever had an idea of something new and believed that if you had the guts to start a business you would make it big?

Have you ever wanted something that you couldn't get, a service or a product, and thought that it could be great that somebody actually solved your need?  Maybe yourself?

If you not only experimented these situations but actually started your own company to test if your gut feeling was right, you suffered and are most likely still suffering from what I call the "start-up thrill". Not to worry. It is a good thing...

The start-up thrill appears as a consequence of infringing on ourselves a combination of uncertainty, mixed with a dose of daring, loads of resilience and a good sense of risk management.

When we give our dreams a chance, no matter what these are, amazing feelings of accomplishment and pride fill each day we work. Inversely, desolation burns our soul when things do not turn out exactly as expected, no matter how much effort we put on them. Like everything in life, I suppose, but this time we are highly responsible for the results.

But, do we mind? Not so much. We are doing something we believe in.

Success within a start-up is a matter of combining amazing execution, with passion and luck. It is believing that if you persevere you'll get where you want.

Because no one ever tell us how great this start-up thrill is, we let time pass by, thinking that maybe one day... one day, we'll do it. Then as we get older, major stoppers to doing anything new take over: risk aversion and shame to fail. At some point, we give up on our dream and we continue ignoring our heart. We think: "start-ups are not for everyone, after all". What a pity!

If you want to feel the start-up thrill, which I highly recommend, do not wait much longer. This comes from someone who feels that she should have jumped onto that train already some time ago. 

When in need of some time of reflection regarding professional career, some people decide to travel all over the world, I decided to give my own idea a chance. Since then, I can't live without the thrill :)

Remember: it is never too late!  

Yet another European company on the way out..

Or not...

But if the markets play their wonders AstraZeneca might be directed from the other side of the Atlantic soon.

I see at least three reasons why this is not positive news for common people in Europe:

1. Consolidating any market into a few players, which seems the current trend everywhere, is ultimately negative for consumers. Trusts and monopolies have never encouraged innovation. Furthermore, they manipulate the offer side of the market with very negative impact. What happened to the anti-trust government policies that so successfully forced companies to be innovative and that brought so much progress in the 80s? I am afraid globalisation happened and, while ensuring competition in the market with laws that stop abuse is critical, it only works when everyone applies the same law. It is almost impossible to break monopolies at a world level, far more to encourage certain countries to comply with a given set of rules. Large corporations have become weapons of attack and defense for any country. 
2. Often, the products and services of the bought company are questioned and left without support. One could claim that if the bought company is in good health, there will be no need to suppress anything. In practical terms business priorities are shifted. Headquarters play a major role in strategic decisions  and the physical distance to the location where services and products are created as well as the ignorance of the new leaders about those products tend to unbalance the decisions. Services that where offered might disappear. Consumers definitely end up having less choice.  A couple of examples come into my mind: Nokia, Skype.
3. Employment in Europe is also at risk with these actions. While the EU has high standards regarding employment and fair exploitation. Other countries are not at the same level. It is a fact that, to remain competitive, Europe is starting to level things down, precisely because not all countries play by the same rules. European corporations with a large tradition have been necessary to support the standards of living that we enjoy. 

Things being equal, selling and buying corporations worldwide, would not be such a big deal. However, they are not equal everywhere, and if we do not all play the game with the same rules, we need to watch out for those that will be exploiting the weaknesses unfairly.

Europe understands this very well, it has been trying to develop a single market for all Europeans for a long time already. Successful in some aspects, catastrophic in some other. The EU is a mini experiment of what the world could go towards to. I am not sure if that brings me a smile or makes me want to run away.

Ah! One final thought:  I am not against mergers and acquisitions. I am against reducing choice and competition via extremely large M&As. 

Bye, bye all boys club*

If several years ago somebody had asked me whether corporations were getting better with regards to inclusion of women and minorities in the workforce, I would have answered that yes, maybe slowly, but clearly surely, a healthy balance is being reached in companies. Unfortunately, I had a very positively-biased perspective of the world.

Back then, I was working in a technology consulting company. I was surrounded by engineers and colleagues that really respected my work. I was part of a team that, at some point in time, was made of 75% women. And I was living in a country, France, where being a woman seemed less of a social burden. In France, people consider that women contribute to wealth by giving birth to the generations that will sustain the future economy. Being born a woman, from that perspective, is not a bad role to have.

Several years ago, I moved to London. What a change! In the technical environments I have navigated, congresses and symposia, the large majority of people attending are men over 40, well into their 50s sometimes. In such environments, I can notice how difficult it is for them to take any of my explanations seriously. 

And then, there is my work place! God bless it! Hopefully, one of the last bastions of all boy-school mentality in Britain, although I am afraid it is not. From the first day, I noticed that it was not going to be easy to fit in. For starters, most senior executives, 95% men but also the remainder of women, would always take me as a personal assistant if I showed any disposition to help them with something they needed help with. I remember this glorious moment when I met a well-known executive. I wanted to explain my role and how I could help him and his team. He did not even let me open my mouth, he said: “Look, don’t speak. I want to tell you several things. I have brought XXX millions into JLL and my time is very valuable. So, listen”. And I listened, not having the opportunity to explain why I was there.

From the beginning I sensed something unusual in the company culture. I could spot a few intelligent, very beautiful women, who, taking advantage of their beauty would manage to minimise the amount of work they had to do, as well as save their position before anyone realised they did not have the skills for what they were meant to do. In certain suspicious circumstances, beauty was not even necessary. In a place like this, being a woman and having a good “personal sponsor” protects you from being dismissed.

After three years in this firm, I have seen how a very diverse team of senior professionals made of women, men, black and other ethnicity is, slowly but very surely, becoming an ‘all  boys club”. Evaluated from outside, it looks horrible. In some months, none of the women and blacks that were part of that leadership group will be there anymore. We could think it is just a coincidence, but I do not believe in coincidences. I do not think that people were particularly targeted and encouraged to leave based on race or sex either. I think it is something deeper than that. There is something that causes this dysfunctional filtering naturally: their corporate culture and values.

A company that runs on politics, where how words are said and who said them is more important than their meaning, where working together has to be financially rewarded, where nepotism is accepted and where employees are afraid of speaking up about unfairness because they fear retaliation eventually has to manage all the negative side effects. Racism and sexism, by selecting only those that are alike, are some of those side effects. All this can easily drive the company to under-perform because the individual interests are prioritised over the progress of the whole entity.

To be completely fair, in this same company, I have also met professionals that acknowledge the challenge and the negative impact of ignoring it. Some of them hold very senior positions and are trying hard to change these unhealthy dynamics. Unfortunately, they are a minority and they are losing the war.

Discussing my experience with friends who also live in London, they have pointed out that this is not a common thing among all companies over here. However, both my female and male friends told me their own experiences with testosterone-driven working environments. Some of them were even more negative than mine. It seems clear to me that this “all–boy club” approach to business is doing more harm than good. It is impacting negatively all workplaces. I would go further and say that the financial crisis and the fact that London’s traditional business sectors are by inertia fostering discrimination will only make going back to a healthy and productive economy more difficult.

*For a definition of the expression, in case it is necessary: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=boys%20club

There is the law and there is the spirit of the law

TV licenses were not created with the aim to prosecute individuals in court, but to find a sustainable way to fund public TV. If too many people are refusing to pay these licenses, maybe it is time to consider a new mechanism to fund public television.

Tax laws and fiscal regulations were not designed to pursue the low-income population that fail to accurately report on their income, but to make sure that those who generate wealth out of wealth, thanks to their privileged position, contribute back to the costs of the common system that helps them sustain their businesses.

Work redundancy procedures were not conceived to make business life difficult by protecting lazy employees. They were not designed either to make the lives of good employees miserable when companies want to unfairly dismiss them. These procedures originated from the need to make sure that people in business think before they act. They aim at ensuring that staff is recognised as a core piece of business success.

In all cases, perception of fairness boils down to admitting that laws are intimately related to the reasons why they were created in the first place. These reasons are what we usually call the spirit of the law.

Those who strictly follow the law but fail to support the spirit of the law can be openly considered cheats. When they are fully aware that there is something morally not right in their behaviour is twice as unjustifiable.

Most times, high technical and legislative knowledge is required to avoid complying with the spirit of a law. Thus, avoiding the spirit is, by all means, a deliberate decision.

Laws need to continuously evolve to fight imaginative financial/tax engineering. It is a never ending race: “Every law has its loophole”.

As consumers, employees and citizens, it is in our hand to support with our behaviour those businesses and people that not only stick to the law but above all follow the spirit of the law.